Tag Archives: Federal Reserve

From 2007 until  some point in 2009, the Federal Reserve Bank loaned U.S. banks 7.7 trilliondollars.  Democrats will notice that this plundering of America’s collective wealth began during the Bush administration.  Republicans will note only that it continued into the Obama

A Whole Lot of Money

administration.  Supporters of Ron Paul, no doubt, will note only that it’s the Federal Reserve,  which shouldn’t exist, because we should all be paying our rent in vegetables or something.

For me, the thing that stood out was the number itself.  7.7 trillion dollars.  That’s more than a thousand dollars for every man, woman and child on earth, half of whom have never had a thousand dollars  at any one moment in their entire lives.  $7.7 trillion=77  million 100 dollar bills.  This is a   serious chunk of money.  This is more money than I thought existed in the whole world.

Of course, it probably doesn’t actually exist.  The Federal Reserve, in order to issue these loans, didn’t actually have to have $7.7 trillion lying around in crumpled old $20 bills, in stacks of 100, piled up in suitcases, floor to ceiling in a deserted warehouse at the edge of town.  They are the Federal Reserve.  They just  issued a line of credit, said the money was there, and it was there.  Like magic.

But, if they can do it for the banks, why couldn’t they do it for the general public.  If they can loan the banks $7.7 trillion, why couldn’t they just pay off everybody’s mortgage?  The banks would still get the money and a lot of people who don’t have homes any more would still have homes.  Why couldn’t they have issued low   interest loans for small business start-ups, which would have had the additional advantage of reducing unemployment?  Why couldn’t they have used the money to provide  clean water to everybody in the world?  That would have been a nice thing to do, and they would have had a few trillion left over.

But, no.  They obviously were never going to do anything like that, because the Federal Reserve Bank serves the banks, and the banks are owned by the 1%.  The rest of us are just screwed, and they have every intention of keeping it that way.